The age distribution of our cars hasn't changed significantly[1] between 2016 and 2022.
However back in 2016, only about 4% of our cars were EVs[2]. So the 2016 car fire statistics is essentially just ICEs, which would include young ICE cars as well.
In 2022, around 20% of our cars were EVs. Given that the age of our cars has remained roughly the same, if EVs were as likely to catch fire as an average ICE in 2016, you'd expect[3] around 140-145 EV fires in 2022. Yet there were only 29.
My point is that even if the overall age distribution is constant, you'd need EVs to work their way through the same lifespan before it came out the same. What we need to know is not the overall distribution, but the age distribution per ICEs and EVs. (Otherwise you end up in a situation where the overall age curve is constant, but EVs are the majority of the young part of the graph, which makes them look good because they're all young and the ICEs look worse because they average even older.)
I tried finding the age distribution per power train, but the closest I could find was per brand, which isn't all that useful. Teslas is a decent proxy for EVs, being EV only and most popular for a long time, but not sure I can find a suitable, representative proxy brand for ICEs.
> Our EVs are on average newer, for the last few years the majority of sales have been EVs. As such our ICEs are on average older.
So wait, do the stats show that ICE cars are more likely to burn, or are they just older on average?